Dearest one,
I wonder how you are doing right now.
I won’t assume you are well because so many of us are not. I won’t assume that you are struggling either, because perhaps times have been kinder to you. But as I’m writing this, thinking of how you might be doing, and contemplating how I am doing, I realize that there is a particular story I must share.
Before I get into that, I’d like to say that this email will have mentions of suicide and grief. If any of these topics feel too heavy to carry at the moment, please bookmark this and read it later.
Also, this is a longer newsletter than usual, but I promise it’s worth it!
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A year ago, I learnt that an old classmate had recently died by suicide. Hearing about his death sent me into a downward spiral where I questioned everything I held on to as truth — my will to live, my closest relations, the things that were important to me, and the person I wanted to be in this world.
It was a harrowing year, entire chunks of which were lost in the incessantly churning jaws of grief. Grief takes away so much, does it not? It also changes so much.
Anyhow, a year in, here's where I am at. On the outside, my life looks almost identical to the one I lost when I learnt of my classmate’s death. But every truth, relation, decision, and act of mine is now mottled with the tinges of what grief left behind.
So today, I want to talk about grief itself, of how I’ve experienced it in the recent past, and the rare gifts it gave me. I’ve noted these as points because they would not fit into a linear narrative + I am in a listicle phase right now.
If you are sitting with any type of grief, I hope this helps.
1. Grief comes in different forms.
I first heard of my classmate’s demise as a casual aside in a conversation with a friend. This makes sense, considering that he and I were not close by any stretch of the imagination. We may have had 5 or 6 conversations during my short stint at J school. We were not friends.
So even though I knew that I was struggling to process his suicide, I didn’t think that any of it was ‘real grief’.
I went through all the stages of grief. I was depressed, in pain, angry, constantly trying to redefine what had happened, and seeking meaning in the loss. But since I didn’t know that I was allowed to grieve, I thought I was experiencing an inevitable pandemic undoing (the pandemic certainly made things worse).
It was only recently that I learnt that there are different types of grief and I was dealing with ‘disenfranchised grief’.
This is a grief that lives on the edges of what’s accepted by social norms. It includes grieving for people who weren’t close to you, for relations that aren’t seen as valid by society, or for losses that aren’t caused by death.
Disenfranchised grief can be tricky. When we tell our minds that we can’t possibly be grieving a certain loss/be grieving this loss for so long, its impacts manifest in the most unexpected areas of our lives that seem separate from the parent source. This makes it difficult to identify what’s really going on.
For instance, I was angry with the world, some friends, and the country's government, and had legitimate reasons for all of the above. But there was also a separate force constantly driving my need to be angry. In each situation, this force amplified my anger to a pitch where I lost the sound of my own self-soothing voice. That was grief.
Remember that there are all sorts of grief and your grief is always valid. Allow yourself to feel and honour it.
2. Resilience takes time to develop.
Last year, my favourite writer, along with pretty much everyone online, spoke a great deal about resilience. But try as I might, I could not relate.
I repeatedly asked myself why it was so easy to shatter my spirit. Why was I so mentally and emotionally un-resilient?
I read and listened to everything I could about the topic. But resilience does not arrive solely because one reads of it or wills it. It is a complex trait that has a lot to do with genetics, early exposure to trauma, how we are taught to cope in our formative years, and our desire to stay on and build better foundations.
While knowing about its contents might help us mimic it, true resilience cannot be forced. If you have not had the privilege to learn it early on, you may have to let yourself fall a few more times so you can understand exactly where your pits are and how far they cave.
With my grief, the pandemic, and the general discord that's been erupting around the world, I sunk into a lot of dark spaces last year. But keeping my eyes wide open helped me turn the experience into the launch of an intuitive buoyancy, one that’s been keeping me afloat through this second wave.
I believe that this buoyancy is resilience. Because despite the comparatively worse circumstances, I am so much better this year. I am more proficient in identifying and meeting my needs, more equipped to survive, and most importantly, filled with an abundant desire to live.
I realized that when you aren’t feeling particularly resilient, the best thing to do is to simply observe the way you crumble and the spaces you fall into. And then, from what you’ve observed, form the most realistic, empowering narrative you can.
Remember that realizing you lack resilience and staying open to building it as an adult is not shameful. It is admirable.
3. Grief opens you up, if you let it.
When the pandemic worsened again, I could tell early on that things would be different for me this time.
I was calmer and was able to take in and feel all sorts of pain without combusting. The anger I felt automatically began deepening into compassion. I could give myself permission to act and respond as I chose.
All of this can be summed up in one word — acceptance. This is an acceptance I've never experienced before. Which is why I know that being here is a direct result of where I was last year.
You see, grief is a process that ends in acceptance. In other words, it is an intricate, powerful lesson in being able to accept the most painful realities.
Of course, I don’t believe that such losses happen for a reason or that grief is the only way to foster radical acceptance. But there are certain benefits to it.
And if you can find a way to understand your grief, honour it, and keep moving forward, it is likely that you will come out the other end being able to access acceptance more easily. Even if grief hardens you at first, you can make your way out of it as a softer thing.
4. The value of your life is profound, in ways you cannot imagine.
At the start of 2020, I had a conversation with a friend, someone who is also prone to suicidal ideation like me. Over a couple of Biras and ice bursts, we discussed what we each held onto when nothing felt worth it anymore.
He said that he thought of the first time when he felt suicidal but did not act on it. Thinking of the friends he made and experiences he had since then reminded him of the possibility that the future held, even when he could not see it.
I said that I looked at a photograph of my younger self to tap into a tenderness and compassion that I could not feel for my adult self. This invoked a mama bear response in me, a fierce protectiveness of this little one’s future.
“Soum, do you think I’ll be okay if you go?” he asked me.
I shrugged, which was less an expression of apathy and more an earnest response to what I could believe.
A few months later, when I found out about my classmate’s death, none of those survival tactics worked. I realized that sometimes when the gale strikes mercilessly, you need a post greater than your own hopes and dreams to hold onto. You need to know that your life matters, period.
A lot of last year was me scrambling to find that meaning.
In lieu of this search, I began writing more about mental health. I created this newsletter where I regularly wrestle with my human condition. I got to know so many of you and to share this endlessly exhausting and beautiful life with you.
Each time you’ve written to me and told me how my work gives you hope, I think of my classmate and know that our legacies bloom in places we had no idea we reached. I know that our lives matter, profoundly so.
There are still days I sob for hours about his death. I think of what it must have been like for him and how no one deserves to feel that hopeless. But when that happens, I am also reminded of the unfathomable, wordless things that we mean to people, those we know and those we least expect.
The grief I felt last year was pronounced by a struggle to make it feel valid. The depth and breadth of that struggle is directly proportional to my current belief that we truly do not know the impact we have on this world by simply existing.
“I won’t be okay, you know,” my friend reminded me during our conversation, “I won’t be okay if you go.”
It took me the whole of last year to understand exactly what that meant. But now I know.
This world will not be okay if you go.
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My dearest, your grief is your own and is incomparable to mine. I cannot intuit how you must be feeling right now, when this will pass, or what the other end holds.
But one year in, I know this much — grief is a purging and there is a beyond to it. And in all likelihood, there is room for a lot, lot more.
Hold on. It gets better.
💌
Love,
Soumya
Poet and activist Nupur Saraswat is running a therapy fund for anyone who needs mental health support right now. If you could use the support, register here. If you can afford to give, please consider donating here.
Recommended Reads 📚
If you have been dealing with survivor’s guilt, you are not alone.
Burnout during the second wave is so much worse. Here’s why.
I’ve watched The Office 3 times in 9 months. This explains a lot.
Creators I Love 👩🎨
Since this is The Human Condition’s one year anniversary edition, the only person I could talk about today is Ayushi Pandey.
Ayushi and I found our way to each other through my essay about losing my classmate. She has been one of my biggest supporters and cheerleaders ever since, bolstering my desire to keep creating and giving me generous portions of hope as though she were made entirely of it (my secret theory is that she probably is!).
Ayushi is a soulful, intelligent, and immensely talented writer whose words add as much beauty to my life as her music suggestions do! Read this piece to know what I mean.
A little more about her — As a person, I'm a little all over the place, with at least 20 things I want to try out at any given time. But the only one I come home to, at end of the day, is writing.
Currently, I'm wearing the cap of a personal essayist. I've written about my experiences dealing with anxiety, I've indulged in portraying my favourite moments in words, I've dipped my feet in fiction and written letters to absolute strangers.
I like to call my writing, 'soft art'. What comes naturally to me is free-flowing, a lazy afternoon read, something you had put for ‘later’. And then when you get to it, you’re glad you took your sweet time to take it all in, to swim and drown in all the gurgling emotions, to cry and laugh with it, to feel a heaviness settle in your chest as it fills with the weight of what it means to be human and then to slowly feel it lift off just right after, realising that you're not alone, you belong, your experiences are valid and there's hope in the world.
Current Jam 🎶
This is a tune that Ayushi shared with me last month. I thought it was so pretty and fit perfectly into this edition.
It’s been one whole year to this newsletter! 🎊
If you have enjoyed any of my emails, please let me know. Tell me what you’d like to see more of and how you’ve been. Write back, I always reply!